GIS in the National Weather Service Jason M. Straub National Weather Service Brownsville
Feb 25, 2016
GIS in the National Weather Service
Jason M. StraubNational Weather Service Brownsville
National Weather Service – Weather Forecast Offices
Internal Use:
Radar Operations Center: Wind Turbine Impacts to Doppler Weather Radar
GIS use in screening and analyzing wind farm interaction with WSR-88D.
NOAA: National Weather Service
Internal Use: Situation Awareness Displays
Past Present
Google Earth Pro
Publicly available data
• www.weather.gov/gis– The National Weather Service’s
repository for Shapefile and KML data
• water.weather.gov–Daily precipitation shapefile
Shapefiles
• Weather Warnings• Flash flood and precipitation guidance• Hurricane tracks and storm surge, and
past hurricane tracks• Severe weather reports database
Severe weather report database
KML
• NWS radar– Single image or loops– Multiple radars/nationwide imagery– Numerous products (radar, velocity, accumulated
precip) • Current Weather Watches and Warnings– Automatically updated– Provides the text product associated with the
advisory
KML
• Local point forecast– Provides the graphical forecast for any point in the
continental U.S.
KML
• Hurricane data– Past tropical cyclone tracks– Tropical cyclone forecast models
Coming Soon
• Daily High/Low/Precipitation
• Hourly observations